Reviews from various genres, read at the speed of light.

In The Hand Of The Goddess

This book does a little one, two, skip a few from the end of the last one, fast-forwarding by about a year. I was unthrilled with that, as the events described in the middle--the aftermath of the ending, Alanna's dad dying (convenient, now he can never out the kids!), Alanna's friends going through their knight's ordeal and freaking her the hell out-- would have been cool to have seen. So I'm a little annoyed at that. Anyway, Alanna starts out around age 15 here, squire to Jonathan and ...well, hormones are kicking in. For her two best guy friends George and Jonathan, at least. Alanna's career goal is to be a knight errant upon hitting age 18 and finishing her training--she figures as a girl-in-disguise, she'll have to get the hell out of Dodge once she comes out of the closet anyway-- and the last thing she wants to do is settle down with a dude. George says he'll wait. Jonathan...is another story. (I will say that if you gotta have a love triangle, it's nice when both guys are worthy fellows and friends.) Anyway, when the story starts out with Alanna meeting with a goddess and getting a token and a magic psychic cat and the goddess says don't swear off love... you get the drift. Alanna's Chosen One-ness is determined, though not so much of a major factor in this book.

Most of the plot revolves around Duke Roger, Jonathan's cousin and Alanna's enemy at first sight. She suspects Roger wants to get the entire royal family killed--and yeah, it's very obvious what he's up to, but he's also very good at covering his tracks. Again and again Alanna thinks this guy is bad news, especially when there's now threats to her own life. But does she overly plot against him? Eh....Well, I'll say that that is annoying from a reader's POV, but it's eventually justified in text. As the book leads up to Alanna's ordeal test, she finally becomes determined to out Roger once and for all, not to mention out herself. That's an...interesting...scene.* (More discussion below the spoiler cut.)

It's still a pretty good series, and if I ever come across the other two in the quartet I'll read them, but I'm still not overwhelmed by it--I know it's for young readers, but it's still rather simple for my tastes and my mind has not been blown yet. So, three and a half stars.

Spoiler space

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I'm amused that during their duel to the death, Roger ends up conveniently and accidentally cutting Alanna's corset off of her--but NOT her shirt on top as far as I can tell, so she doesn't flash the entire court and they see the outline of boobies. (This is not remotely plausible to me there. It's right up there with Faye's shirt popping open on her giant boobs on Cowboy Bebop and yet her nipples aren't shown. Clothing physics does not work this way.) And then the whole duel just stops the hell dead to deal with OMG BOOBIES.

I get the drama of "Let's out her accidentally in front of the entire court rather than telling people herself," but it's also pretty awkward and unrealistic and took me out of the story there.